[TUHS] The UNIX Command Language (1976)
Steve Nickolas
usotsuki at buric.co
Tue Dec 1 19:27:09 AEST 2020
On Mon, 30 Nov 2020, jason-tuhs at shalott.net wrote:
>
>> "The UNIX Command LanguageĀ is the first-ever paper published on the Unix
>> shell. It was written by Ken Thompson in 1976."
>>
>> https://github.com/susam/tucl
>
> Thanks for that.
>
> This reminded me that the Thompson shell used goto for flow control, which I
> had forgotten.
>
> Bourne commented on the omission of goto from the Bourne shell, "I eliminated
> goto in favour of flow control primitives like if and for. This was also
> considered rather radical departure from the existing practice."
>
> Was this decision contentious at all? Was there a specific reason for goto's
> exclusion in the Bourne shell?
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> -Jason
My personal opinion is that the way the Bourne shell handled flow control
is a lot easier to code for (since I wrote a version of COMMAND.COM, and
it has to have a "goto" command, and all the hairiness that goes with
needing to be able to random-seek a shell script).
-uso.
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